Quick Check In

I've started a couple of posts this week, but haven't hit that publish button. I just don't think I have anything to say right now. There's a fine line between sharing something that may be helpful and/or mildly interesting, and just plain oversharing. We had my son's birthday parties this past weekend. I'm taking a class this week at work. Otherwise, everything is just same ol', same ol'.

It was rather hot today, but some clouds rolled in this evening and the weather was perfect for eating dinner out on the back deck.

Hopefully things will get more interesting again soon!

Weekly Progress Report #20

Weight: 142.9 pounds

After taking a few weeks off for vacation, I'm less than a pound heavier than when I left on vacation. That's the good news. Now I just need to figure out how to get in the proper mental head-space to make some real progress. To begin with, I need to stop making excuses and thinking "this one time won't matter" because this one time becomes nearly every time. I also need to stop thinking that it's a problem to experience hunger sometimes. It's not going to hurt me if I feel hungry for even a couple of hours. Of course if I make the right food choices (high protein and fiber) I won't get so hungry again after eating. I want to weigh less and have less fat on my body, so I need to make the proper choices to achieve that end. Also, I really want to see Crimson Peak which is the reward I've landed on for achieving my goal, so now I have to make some progress. (I sure hope the movie lives up to the hype!)

During the summer my husband and kids are off. It's easier to get out the door on time when no one else is awake and the house is dark, though it does feel somewhat lonely. On the positive side, my husband is tackling his "honey do" list and lots of things are getting taken care of around the house. Our yard is looking great, and the inside of the house looks revitalized with a fresh coat of paint. I also don't have to do my weekly house cleaning during the summer as the rest of my family does it for me. The weather's nice so it's easy to get out and work out. So now I have even fewer excuses for making poor choices. I'm really hoping that I'm mentally read to start making some serious changes!

Happy Friday

I'm in a pretty good mood today. It was our half day at work. The sun is shining, there's a gentle breeze, and it's about 80 degrees outside. The news on my reader was good today. So yeah, I'm just feeling good right now.

I got out with the camera today and took a few shots of the pretty blooms in my neighborhood. I was playing with my camera settings to capture something a little more artsy in a few of these.

This is a picture from a couple of nights ago that I wanted to share because I just loved the color of the sky.

I'm going to start my weigh-ins again this weekend, and I'm feeling a little sheepish about it. I didn't gain much weight on vacation because of all the walking we did, but I've put a couple more pounds on since we've been home and I've been back to my sedentary office job. Oh well, at least now I've given myself to work towards (getting to see Crimson Peak in the theater). Maybe it will really help.

On a related note, I really struggle sometimes to choose a drink. Sometimes I want something with more flavor than water, but I try to avoid caffeine so that when I really need it it will still work. But pretty much all of the caffeine-free drinks have sugar, so calories. At home I can make myself an herbal iced tea, but that's not an option when I'm out. Does anyone else struggle with this (fairly trivial) issue?

Busy and Exhausted

Whew, things have been rather busy in my life of late, and as a result I didn't manage to get a post up yesterday. After I left work yesterday I picked up my son from his summer program, dropped him off at home, and took my daughter to her piano lesson. I was hoping to go for a walk while my daughter was at her piano lesson yesterday evening, but alas, it was not to be.

Looking out my car window.

Now, I'm not going to melt in a little rain (actually it was pretty heavy), but unfortunately the lightening was much too close to risk going for a walk with a lightening rod, er, umbrella.

After the piano lesson, we went back home where the house was in a shambles because my husband (who has the summer off, what, I'm not jealous!) and daughter painted our family room, dining room, and kitchen this week. They finished yesterday, but everything was still covered with drop cloths, so we went out to grab some dinner.

Our next stop was to visit my husband's grandmother. While we were in Ireland, she was going down the stairs, which she does backwards because of her knees, and thought she was at the bottom, but in actuality still had another step to go. So when she stepped back and didn't encounter the floor as she expected to, she tumbled and broke some ribs and her femur, and partially collapsed one of her lungs.

The good news is that she has always been very active, fit, and trim, so she's recovering more quickly than anyone expected. The harder part is that her husband (not my father-in-law's dad), who has never been a very easy man, has terminal cancer and is experiencing some dementia. She has been under so much stress trying to help him, and to make him understand that she's also aging so can't do as much as she used to do. So she isn't moving back in with her husband after this over. He's going to an assisted living facility and she's moving into senior apartments and she'll just visit her husband.

By the time we got done with all of that, I was too tired to get a post written. I've decided that I am chronically exhausted. I sleep through the night about three times per year. On good nights I probably get about six hours of sleep, most nights are probably between four and five hours, and bad nights might be as little as two hours of sleep. I feel like I'm regularly functioning at a reduced capacity, and I never feel very good. One random Thursday night several weeks ago was one of those rare nights where I did manage to sleep all night; and I couldn't hardly believe how good I felt the next day. It really highlighted how poorly I feel the majority of the time.

I've been fighting this sleep issue for over a decade now, and it's getting worse. I don't like to take medication, so I've been trying to do everything behaviorally. At this point, I think I'm stuck in a vicious cycle where I know I won't sleep, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and my body has these bad habits so I can't sleep. The behavioral tricks all work...sometimes, but not reliably every time, or even the majority of the time. It's really about a 50/50 proposition. So I think I've reached the point where I'm going to make an appointment with my doctor and get a prescription for sleeping pills, because this has got to change. I think getting more sleep would help with nearly every aspect of my life. I think it would be easier for me to have a positive attitude, to be patient, and to stick with my eating plan and lose weight. It might also help with the fact that I frequently lose my vocabulary when I'm speaking.

So that's what's been happening with me since I got back from vacation. I'm planning on restarting my weekly progress posts this coming Sunday, and will hopefully have more time and energy to keep the regular posts going.

Dublin and The End

This vacation was one of the best vacations I've ever taken. I loved seeing another culture, even if it was only slightly different from ours. I loved how green and beautiful everything was in Ireland. I even loved the weather since I don't really enjoy extremely hot weather. The whole trip was "loads of craic" as our tour guide, Matthew, would have said. That's pronounced crack, and it means fun. 

One thing about the trip that was a little difficult was how much it made me miss my dad. He would have loved to have heard about everything we did and saw. He would have been delighted to know that much of the music he liked to listen to when I was growing up was still being played. He would have been happy that his grandchildren were getting to go on these kinds of trips. But I couldn't share any of it with him. As difficult as he could be, I do miss my dad, and it's been hard with Father's Day being this past weekend.

We spent the final two days of our trip in Dublin, and I'm going to cover both days in this one, final post about our trip to Ireland. On our way to Dublin we drove through Moneygall and stopped at Barack Obama Plaza. It was...weird, and rather American. It almost felt like being in a truck stop on I-80 in Iowa. President Obama had some distant relatives in the town (they've got a plaque on the house) and stopped there to have a beer. So they built up this entire center with a petrol station and chain restaurants inside and called it Barack Obama plaza.

One of the first things we saw in Dublin was the River Liffey, which is a tidal river. I had never heard of such a thing before, so I thought that was pretty cool. Our Dublin tour guide, Therese, called it the "sniffey Liffey." She was from Dublin and had served in the government. Her accent was much more formal and sophisticated as a result, and it made her easier to understand. She told us the native Dubliners are called "Dubs," and there's a common term, "Up the Dubs" to cheer for one of their sports teams.

Therese took us to St. Patrick's cathedral next. Oliver Cromwell used it as stable for his horses when he was in the country persecuting Catholics, and completely destroyed it. The Guinness family later restored it, and it's now a pretty impressive building to walk through. Our next stop was the Trinity College Library where we got to view (but not photograph) the Book of Kells. We also visited Phoenix park and saw the place where the pope spoke when he visited Dublin in 1979. Even in the city there are nice views of the Irish hillsides.

The view from Phoenix Park.

Phoenix Park. The cross marks the hillside where Pope John Paul II delivered a sermon.

Trinity College Library. 200,000 volumes are stored here.

Another picture in the Library.

Close up of a book shelf in the library.

Our final stop on our first day in Dublin was to the Guinness storehouse to tour the building. It wasn't really my thing, but the views at the top were pretty impressive. The bar at the top of the building has a 360 degree view of the city, and that was my favorite part of the tour.

A view from the top of the Guinness storehouse building.

The next day we toured Kilmainham Gaol, where we learned more Irish history. One thing the guide told us that really stuck with me was about how many people Ireland lost in the nineteenth century due to the potato famine. At one point there were about 6 million people in Ireland. During the famine about 1 million died, and 1 million immigrated out of the country. The population never really recovered and there are still only about 4.5 million in the country today, 1/2 million of which are in Dublin. He also asked if any of us had noticed the dragons over the entrance, which I had, and had of course snapped a photo. He said that they represented the five capital crimes, and that people were hung on either side of the entrance.

Dragons over the gaol entrance.

The five capital crimes which resulted in execution were:

• Murder
• Rape
• Treason
• Capital Theft
• Piracy with Violence (I guess piracy without violence just landed you in jail, but didn't result in execution!)

We finished off that night with a traditional Irish evening of singing, dancing, and a comedy routine. My daughter hates to be the center of attention, and of course they drug her up on stage. I was proud of her for going, and she got to play a tambourine and a bodhram drum. There was a table of German tourists sitting next to us, and some of them clearly didn't speak English as well as the others. So they didn't always get the jokes until someone told it in German and then there were these delayed laughs. It was kind of cute, and quite frankly, funnier than most of the jokes. But the music and step dancing were great.

My daughter on stage with the tambourine.

Playing the bodhram drum. This was one of her few smiles up there, so I'm sharing this photo even though her eyes are closed.

Dublin was a neat city. It was very international and we heard all different languages and accents. But it was still just a big city, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the rest of the country with it's unique look of green hillsides in different shades, broken by stone walls or hedgerows and dotted with sheep and cows.

Here are a few final thoughts about the trip.
Our tour guide had some really fun little sayings, so I started a list of "Matthewisms."

• "This is us..." Matthew would say things like, "this is us, leaving Killarney." He used this particular term quite frequently.
• "Grand job"
• "Lovely"
• "Oh, aye"
• "Youse" This is a hold-over from old English and is something we hear native Spanish speakers using at home because they lost their plural possessive, ustedes, when they converted to speaking English.
• One day Matthew called his Grannie from Donegal and put her on speaker phone and she asked, "are they taking me well?" 

Matthew with my children in Dublin.

I also kept a list of terms that differ in American and Irish English:

Here are a few of the Irish food and drinks we tried while we were there. My favorites were the Club Soda and Dairy Milk, I'm not a huge drinker.

• Club Soda - citrus flavored soda
• Taytos - crisps
• Dairy Milk Chocolate
• Whiskey
• Bushmills
• Powers
• Jameson
• Paddys
• Stouts
• Guinness
• Murphys
• Smithwick (pronounced Smithicks) Ale

That was a fabulous trip and I'm so glad we took the time to go. I also appreciate those of you who stuck with me and read about the trip and viewed my photos! Tomorrow it will be back to current events.

Irish Improvisation

I didn't manage to get any posts up this weekend, nor did I get all of my household chores done. It was a busy weekend around our house!

We're in the home-stretch on the Ireland posts, I think there will only be one more after this one.

We left Killarney to head to Limerick for our final day of the trip when the whole tour group would be together. Our tour guide, Matthew, had done a great deal of improvisation on the trip, adding extra stops, sharing Irish food and drinks, but he outdid himself on this particular day. The planned stop for the morning didn't work out because the bus couldn't be accommodated in the car park (their term for parking lot). So he took us to another place where he'd seen the parking area, but where he'd never gone on a hike. It was called Ghuagan Barra and it turned out to be a fabulous hike in an area that reminded me of home a little bit. Except at home we don't find greenery growing on every surface.

The view before we started the hike.

Another lovely stone wall.

Getting ready to head out on the hike.

Tall evergreen tree forest.

Moss growing on old, fallen trees.

On the trail.

We saw several sheep on the hike.

This was the view that reminded me of home.

Sheep at the bottom of the hill after the hike.

Closer picture of the sheep.

Since we're used to hiking between 10,000 and 12,000 feet, we looked pretty impressive that day as it was so much easier to breathe so the hike was very simple. When we reached the bottom and the area where the bus was parked, we were once again offered the option of walking back to the little village or riding the bus. I chose walking and this time the kids went with us. We had a very traditional lunch with soup and brown bread back at the little shopping area, then got back on the bus to reach Limerick. But the improvised stops weren't over yet for the day.

Our bus tire had a slow leak, so the bus driver had to find a petrol station to put some air back into the tire. While he was working on that, our tour guide happened across two teenage boys with hurling sticks and asked them to provide a demonstration for us. Sean and Liam were happy to oblige and showed us how they start the matches by banging their hurlers together which is called "the clash of the ash" since the hurlers are made of ash. They also showed us how they're allowed to pick up the ball and how they pass it. They were pretty impressive, and it was fun to get to see that side of the Irish culture.

Liam

Sean

Our tour guide was from Derry, and his team happened to be playing a Gaelic Football match that day. He put the match on the bus radio so we could hear the accents. Or so he claimed, I think he just really wanted to listen! As we got close to the end of the match he decided that he wanted to show us the game. He said if we didn't find a little town with a pub that we'd just stop at someone's house and ask them to put the kettle on. We did manage to find a very quaint little town called Donoughmore where the pub owner was more than happy to accommodate our group. Matthew put his Derry jersey on and everyone got drinks, small sandwiches, and black pudding (blood sausage) in the pub. 

Matthew on the bus in his Derry jersey. 

In the pub.

I watched the game for a few minutes, but there was a very old cemetery across the street from the pub so my son and I walked over there and explored and took pictures. The oldest tombstone we found was 1791. I think some of them were older, but they were faded so that we could no longer read the dates.

Cemetery behind a stone wall (of course).

Cemetery from the entrance.

Mausoleum covered with greenery.

Very old Celtic crosses.

My son exploring the mausoleum.

Interesting carvings on a very old headstone.

The entire day ended up being improvised, and it was one of my favorite days on the whole trip. Tomorrow I'll wrap up the trip with the time in Dublin.

Final Day in Killarney

A hillside in the Caha Mountains.

On our third and final day in Killarney, we started out the morning driving through the Caha Mountains. We had to go through a couple of tunnels which just barely fit the bus. Here's a picture of the sign we encountered right before one of the tunnels, and the tunnel itself.

Kind of frightening road sign.

Tunnel in the "mountains." Yeah, I'm from Colorado, and they seemed more like hills to me.

There are Gaeltacht areas in Ireland where the people only speak Irish, and the street signs are only in Irish because the government gave up trying to put English on the signs after the locals painted over it five times. I'm pretty glad that this particular sign had the English translation also!

We rode a ferry out to Garnish Island and got to see seals in the water on the ride out. The boat driver also pointed out the roof of Maureen O'Hara's house.

This seal looked like he was smiling in the early morning sunshine.

Several seals sunning themselves.

Even more seals hanging out on the rocks.

I loved the little guy's eyes.

The roof of Maureen O'Hara's home.

Once we docked on the island we walked around the beautiful gardens on Garnish Island. I think that may have been the day I took the largest number of photos. I do know it was the day when I completely filled up the 32GB memory card in my camera's first slot and started in on the second memory card. Don't worry, I'm not going to post all of them!

Sign in Irish and English.

Flowers on a building in the gardens.

I believe these flowers are fuchsia.

Lilly pads in the pond in the gardens.

Irish irises.

Daisies, buttercups, and clover.

Rhododendron behind the daisies, buttercups, and clover. The ubiquitous flowers of Ireland.

We had lunch in Glengarriff that day, then headed back to Killarney through the Ring of Kerry.

One of the stops in the Ring of Kerry. That's our bus driver, John, in the bottom left corner of the photo.

As we were headed back, Matthew said we'd be passing Torc Waterfall in Killarney National Park, and he'd be happy to drop anyone off who wanted to walk the three kilometers back to the hotel. When he asked for takers, I didn't care if no one else was doing it, I raised my hand. But I didn't end up doing it alone, my husband and six other folks decided to get off and walk back also. My son was not happy that I told him we were going to walk back, then someone else offered to take my children back to the hotel, so it was even a kid-free walk. This was our third and final visit to the beautiful park.

Sunlight filtering through the trees in the park.

Trees in front of the lake.

Limestone on the side of the lake.

More trees in the park. I LOVED Killarney National Park!

The reason I was so determined to go back to the park was because I desperately wanted to see Muckross Abbey. It's another beautiful old stone building which is being reclaimed by nature, plus it has a cemetery loaded with beautiful Celtic crosses. As an interesting side note, Matthew told us why so many of the old buildings in Ireland have no roofs. Apparently if a building has a roof it's considered fit to live in and will be subject to property tax. However, without a roof the building isn't considered a domestic building and therefore isn't subject to the tax.

Muckross Abbey from a distance.

Muckross Abbey from another angel.

Celtic cross.

Celtic cross.

Celtic cross.

Yet another Celtic cross.

Tree growing in the interior courtyard of the Abbey.

Looking out from the "inside" of Muckross Abbey.

We were told one can always tell if a building was used as a castle or a church by the size of the windows. Small windows were easily defensible (and usually wider inside) and were used in castles. Large windows served to let light into places of worship.

Leaving the park for the last time.

We walked back to the hotel and ran into a roadside vendor selling fresh strawberries, which was a nice treat since we were eating out at every meal. I think we ended up walking about ten miles in total that day, which was why I didn't put too much weight on despite eating more than I should have.

We headed out into the town of the Killarney for the final time that evening. After the restaurant my husband found on Yelp was a bust since they were "full", we had dinner in a real pub while a Gaelic Football match was on. I think it was a much more authentic experience as it was definitely off the beaten tourist path. We saw lots of really drunk people and at one point a table was knocked over and pictures were knocked off the wall. We walked out that evening through a puddle of beer, and good cheer.

Picture of an Irish footballer legend in the pub.